Re: assorted HTML and SGML questions
Daniel W. Connolly (connolly@beach.w3.org)
Sun, 19 Nov 1995 01:41:34 -0500
In message <199511190623.BAA16340@csb.bu.edu>, Joe Wells writes:
>>>>>> "lee" == <lee@sq.com>
>>>>>> "Dan" == Daniel W Connolly <connolly@beach.w3.org>
> Joe> Q: (("text/html" Internet Media Type)) Does text/html forbid
> Joe> including the SGML declaration (<!SGML ...>)? I know it forbids
> Joe> including a document type declaration subset, but the standard is
> Joe> unclear on whether the SGML declaration is allowed.
>
> Dan> To identify information as an HTML document conforming to this
> Dan> specification, each document must start with one of the following
> Dan> document type declarations.
>
> Dan> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
>
> Dan> ...
>
>I must be stupid, but I don't see the information in there.
Nope, I'm the stupid one. I thought you were asking about doctype
declarations, but you were plainly asking about <!SGML ...>
declarations.
The HTML standard says that a user agent _should_ use the supplied
SGML declaration. This is so that user agents that support _more_
than that (e.g. Unicode) are still conforming.
> Perhaps you
>mean that "must start with ..." implies that there can be nothing before
>the document type declaration.
Well... yes.
> Does that mean that the following is
>illegal because the first thing is not a document type declaration?
>
> <!-- document type declaration on next line -- >
> <!doctype html public "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
Hmmm... yes, it does. Seems a little over-specified, but there
you have it.
Dan